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By Ariane de Vogue and Dan Berman
The Senate Friday morning confirmed Neil Gorsuch, a 49-year-old federal judge who could help cement a conservative majority on the bench for decades, to the Supreme Court, according to a CNN count of the vote.
The vote was 54-45, mostly along party lines. Only three Democrats: Sens. Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly, sided with the GOP majority.
Vice President Mike Pence presided over the vote, but was not needed to break a tie.
The court has been operating with eight justices since the sudden death in February 2016 of Justice Antonin Scalia and a protracted fight over President Barack Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland.
Senate Republicans refused to consider Garland’s nomination until after the November election, and Trump’s surprise win meant a conservative would succeed Scalia.
Gorsuch’s confirmation essentially continues the ideological balance that existed before Scalia’s death, with four conservatives, four liberals and Justice Anthony Kennedy as a swing vote between the blocs. At the same time, several justices are over 70 years of age, and retirement rumors surrounding Kennedy could give Trump other opportunities during his presidency to add to the conservative bloc.
“He has sterling credentials, an excellent record and an ideal judicial temperament,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “He has the independence of mind for fairness.”
Gorsuch is a former clerk for Kennedy, who will swear in the newest associate justice Monday. It will mark the first time a law clerk and the justice he or she served for will sit on the bench together.
Gorsuch’s conservative bona fides
Gorsuch’s opinions on religious liberty, where he sided with the challengers to the so-called Obamacare contraceptive mandate, and on the separation of powers, where he said too much deference was given by the courts to administrative agencies, are key to his appeal to Trump and Republicans.
During his time on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, Gorsuch joined an opinion siding with closely held corporations who believed that the so-called contraceptive mandate of Obamacare violated their religious beliefs. The ruling was later upheld by the Supreme Court. Gorsuch wrote separately holding that the mandate infringed upon the owners’ religious beliefs “requiring them to lend what their religion teaches to be an impermissible degree of assistance to the commission of what their religion teaches to be a moral wrong.”
He also wrote a majority opinion in a separation of powers case holding that too much deference was given to administrative agencies. This issue is a favorite of conservatives and Gorsuch’s beliefs align with those of Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas.
Gorsuch, in a speech last year at Case Western Reserve University School of law, aligned himself with Scalia’s judicial philosophy.
“The great project of Justice Scalia’s career was to remind us of the differences between judges and legislators. To remind us that legislators may appeal to their own moral convictions and to claims about social utility to reshape the law as they think it should be in the future, ” he said. “But that judges should do none of these things in a democratic society.”
Former clerk
While Gorsuch is a fourth-generation Coloradan, his confirmation means a return to Washington and the Supreme Court.
He is a former clerk to both Justices Byron White and Kennedy.
He also spent part of his youth in Washington when his mother, Anne Gorsuch Burford, served in the Reagan administration as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
She resigned in 1983 under controversy after refusing to turn over toxic waste records to Congress.
He served as a partner at a prestigious Washington Law firm, Kellogg, Huber as well as Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General.
Gorsuch and his wife, Louise, have two daughters. They currently live in Boulder, Colorado.
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